


True Colors

by lisachan



Series: Chronicles of the Academy [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 12:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6116612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's always been a special place Celes has longed to come back to, no matter where he went, no matter how long he stayed away. It's a little beach hidden at the back of the Crystal Palace, a place he usually likes to visit on his own, the only place in the world where he's always felt understood by something greater than just people, family and friends included.<br/>It's time to go back there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Colors

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another story written for this year's COW-T, on this year's new characters. This time, I decided to focus solely on my beloved Celes <3

There’s nothing he remembers more fondly from when he was a child than the few days his mother let him spend at the Crystal Palace in between trips. 

She never liked to spend much time back at the palace. Despite always having someone waiting for her, or maybe just because of that, she always liked to be anywhere else the most. She loves the travel, the adventure, the new landscapes, the different faces, the limitless possibilities. She always carried Celes with her, wherever she went, and Celes was always grateful to her for that, because despite the fact that leaving was a selfish choice, something his mother needed to do for herself, she always tried to turn it into something that could hold some value for them both. She always made it a shared experience, something common, and whenever a trip was over Celes could always say he had learned something new, that he was a richer person, now, for having followed his mother around. And that was the best gift his mother could ever give him, really, making him a richer person, a better one, by just letting him come along with her despite being somewhat of a burden, especially when he was very very young. (Another precious gift having been, of course, always trying to make him feel like he was no burden at all.)

Still, it was nice to go back home every now and then. He liked to travel the lands, but he loved to go back home, take root again, rediscover the astonishingly beautiful rooms of the Palace, run the eternal hallways, see the faces he had learned to love in the gaps between his mother’s questions about whether he’d have liked more to see a newly formed civilization or an ancient, setting one. 

Home was the stern and deeply worried face of uncle Lacros, his constantly furrowed brow, the thin line of his lips as he looked at both him and his mother with concern and a silent question forever impressed in his clear pupils. Home was the patient, polite smile curling uncle Lænton’s lips upwards whenever he heard his mom and uncle bicker somewhere in the distance. Home was Vesper too, her astonishing, sharp charm, the controlled, serious eyes with which she always looked towards his mom and the smart, somewhat wicked smile she always reserved for him whenever she wanted to offer him a chance to run somewhere doing mischief with her. It was aunt’s Abilene’s warm embrace, her gorgeous, colorful clothes, her long pale hair, her stunning beauty, aunt Abilene: something to look up to, a goal, an objective, an if she could, maybe so can I. It was uncle Cyprian’s games, their long runs together, the fact that he never forgot to compliment him for having put on some mass and muscle, but only when he really had, so Celes always knew it was true, and he could take pride in it. It was sitting long hours with uncle Metacomet telling jokes and talking all and nothing, it was just sitting there feeling understood, the way he always had to smile at him so openly, so easily it made Celes sure that there was no mountain high enough that it couldn’t be climbed. Home was his grandparents, their sugary affection, their protectiveness, how their mere presence could make him feel thankful to the universe for having given them to him.

But home was also something else, something Celes would find on his own, when he was free from his uncle’s lessons and from spending time with his endless extended family. Something he could only find outside the Crystal Palace, a place he longed to come back to every time he stepped foot back on Tanit.

There was a little beach hidden behind the South wall of the Palace. It was remote and impossible to reach if you didn’t exactly know how, slipping through the suffocating, narrow tunnels underneath the fortress. Whenever he could, Celes loved to go there, and whenever that happened he always went on his own.

It was nothing but a small gulf, its half-moon shape made it look like a picture right out of a children’s book and it’s pinkish sand gave it the quality of a fantasy landscape, but those weren’t the beautiful details Celes went in search of when he went down there and, slipping off his shoes, started walking up and down the shore, wetting his feet with each and every wave and pressing with all his weight against the soaked sand to try and leave a much bigger print of his foot than it really was.

It was the seashells, nothing more.

The seashells on that beach, perhaps because of the peculiar sand, perhaps because of the fact that no one ever came there to tamper with the natural balance of the environment, were the most special seashells Celes had ever found in his life – and even when he was nothing but a child he had already traveled to so many seasides that had to mean something. 

They came in all shapes and dimensions, but their unique quality wasn’t their variety, it was their composition. They looked like they were made in mother-of-pearl, not only on the inside, but on the outside too. There were colors running wild everywhere above them, you only needed to tilt them slightly on the side to see a whole rainbow dancing on top of them, shining in the sun, blinding.

It was how easily they changed, that’s what made them beautiful to Celes’ eyes. The fact that you could look at them one moment and they were shiny, silver and white, and the next, just by holding them in your hand, just by moving them aside, they were pink, violet and blue, and then they were green, purple and gray. One moment indigo, the other the brightest red. With a simple movement they ran from a side to the other. You couldn’t keep their ever-changing nature hidden because you knew that even in darkness, if there were someone capable to see colors in the absence of light, they’d have seen them change too, if not in pigment, simply in their brilliance.

That was always, always what he’d have wanted the most for himself.

To be able to change.

With the snap of his fingers.

To take his colors and mute them into different ones.

*

This is the first time he comes back to this beach since he went away for the Academy five years ago. Sure, he’s been home several times in the meanwhile, both alone and with Shannen and Langley, but he’s never come down here again, and this is the first time he brings them along to see the place that’s meant so much for him when he was nothing but a child who needed the thought of magical seashells to hold to the hope that someday, somehow, he’d have found the ability to turn himself into the person he deeply believed he was destined to become.

When he arrived at the Palace, this morning, his mother – surprisingly enough – was home. She was sitting on his bed, as if waiting for him, playing with the tiny crystal ball she’s always worn around her neck – her symbol, her Seer’s mark, the one that’s different for all seers, the one each seer finds for themselves.

Upon seeing him, she hugged him. “You’ve graduated, my little one,” she said, leaving soft peachy kisses on his cheek, “It’s time you find your mark, and you start wearing it.”

To this day, Celes doesn’t really know if he’s ever going to become a real Seer, taking the place of his mother and all that comes with it. He’d be the first male Seer Tanit has ever seen. The thought is thrilling, electrifying. It’s also terrifying, and Celes doesn’t want to play with it too long, lest it gets broken, like all the toys when you can’t put a stop to the time you spend using them. He pushes it away, taking comfort in knowing it’s gonna be a long, long time before he has to really put his destiny to the test.

But he detected determination in his mother’s tone, and he understood no matter what’s coming in the next few years of his life, his mark is something he’ll need anyway.

He knew where to find it already. There were colors dancing on the iridescent surfaces of a thousand seashells in his mind.

As Langley exhales ecstatically and takes off his clothes for a quick warm bath as the sun sets, and Shannen sits alone a few steps away, enjoying the quiet humming of the sea and the way the last rays of sunshine dance upon the surface of the water, Celes leans in and grabs only one from the sand. He cleans it up and looks at it from one side, and then from the other.

It’s pink, turning to blue.

He thinks he found it.


End file.
